Residential and industrial buildings have vertically mounted doors that have door locks, passage door latch sets or dead bolts, all of which normally include a reciprocally movable latch bolt mountable on the door for engaging an opening in a strike plate on the facing door jamb. The latch bolt is biased by a spring to a normal extended position for engaging the opening in the strike plate. As the foundations for the building settle, the latch bolt and complementary strike plate opening move vertically relative to one another and become misaligned. In such instances, the latch bolt may be displaced sufficiently from its aligned position so that it will not engage the opening in the strike plate.
At the present time, this problem of misalignment is overcome by removing the strike plate from its recess in the door jamb and chiseling or morticing the recess at the upper or lower end thereof. The strike plate is replaced in the enlarged recess and moved vertically up or down until the strike plate opening is once again in alignment with the latch bolt. In this aligned position, the strike plate is resecured to the door. This known way of realigning the latch bolt with the opening in the strike plate has the following disadvantages:
One disadvantage is that the morticed or cut-out recess receiving the strike plate in the door jamb must be enlarged above or below the strike plate to allow vertical adjustment of the strike plate within the cut-out portion. This is aesthetically unacceptable, requiring the application of a wood filler to the cut-out portion above or below the strike plate after it is replaced.
Another disadvantage is that the screw openings in the reinstalled strike plate no longer align with the complementary screw openings in the wood door jamb. To work properly, the screw openings in the door jamb have to be filled and new openings provided only a few thousandths of an inch from the old openings. This is time consuming and the results are not always satisfactory, since the screws tend to follow the old screw hole and return the strike plate to its initial misaligned condition.
Still another disadvantage with the aforementioned type of solution to the misalignment problem is that the opening in the wood door jamb in register with the strike plate opening is now misaligned. A small chisel or the like is required to enlarge the opening in the door jamb which would otherwise block the latch bolt from entering the door jamb opening after it has passed through the strike plate opening. Accordingly, it is evident that the presently known solution to this misalignment problem is time consuming, unreliable and generally unsatisfactory.